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The Father of the Forest 
and Other Poems 



The Father of the Forest 
and Other Poems 



BY 

WILLIAM WATSON 



y 



*^ 




CHICAGO: STONE & KIMBALL 
LONDON: JOHN LANE 

MDCCCXCV 






COPYRIGHT, 1895 
BY STONE «r KIMBALL 






THE FRONTISPIECE IS FROM A PHOTOGRAPH 
BY FREDERICK HOLLYER 



Contents 



THE FATHER OF THE FOREST 


3 


HYMN TO THE SEA 


17 


THE TOMB OF BURNS 


31 


SONNETS 




" I THINK YOU NEVER WERE " 


43 


TO WITH A VOLUME OF VERSE 


44 


THE TURK IN ARMENIA 


45 


LYRICS 




" I DO NOT ASK " 


49 


"O, LIKE A QUEEN" 


50 


APOLOGIA 


53 



The Father of the Forest 



TO JOHN ST. LOE STRACHEY 



The Father of the Forest 
I 

/^LD emperor Yew, fantastic sire, 
^-^ Girt with thy guard of dotard kings, 
What ages hast thou seen retire 
Into the dusk of alien things? 
What mighty news hath stormed thy shade, 
Of armies perished, realms unmade? 

Already wast thou great and wise, 
And solemn with exceeding eld, 
On that proud morn when England's eyes, 

Wet with tempestuous joy, beheld 
Round her rough coasts the thundering 

main 
Strewn with the ruined dream of Spain. 
3 



4 The Father of the Forest 

Hardly thou count'st them long ago, 
The warring faiths, the wavering land, 

The sanguine sky's delirious glow 

And Cranmer's scorched, uplifted hand. 

Wailed not the woods their task of shame, 

Doomed to provide the insensate flame? 

Mourned not the rumouring winds, when she, 
The sweet queen of a tragic hour, 

Crowned with her snow-white memory 
The crimson legend of the Tower? 

Or when a thousand witcheries lay 

Felled with one stroke, at Fotheringay? 

Ah, thou hast heard the iron tread 
And clang of many an armoured age. 

And well recall'st the famous dead ; 
Captains or counsellors, brave or sage, 

Kings that on kings their myriads hurled. 

Ladies whose smile embroiled the world. 



The Father of the Forest 

Rememberest thou the perfect knight, 
The soldier, courtier, bard in one, 

Sidney, that pensive Hesper-light, 
O'er Chivalry's departed sun? 

Knew'st thou the virtue, sweetness, lore, 

Whose nobly hapless name was More? 

The roystering prince, that afterward 
Belied his madcap youth, and proved 

A greatly simple warrior lord, 

Such as our warrior fathers loved — 

Lives he not still? for Shakespeare sings 

The last of our adventurer kings. 

His battles o'er, he takes his ease. 
Glory put by, and sceptred toil. 

Round him the carven centuries 
Like forest branches arch and coil. 

In that dim fame, he is not sure 

Who lost or won at Azincour ! 



6 The Father of the Forest 

Roofed by the mother minster vast 

That guards Augustine's rugged throne, 

The darling of a knightly Past 

Sleeps in his bed of sculptured stone, 

And flings, o'er many a warlike tale, 

The shadow of his dusky mail. 

The monarch who, albeit his crown 
Graced an august and sapient head. 

Rode roughshod to a stained renown 
O'er Wallace and Llewellyn dead, 

And perished in a hostile land. 

With restless heart and ruthless hand. 

Or that disastrous king on whom 
Fate, like a tempest, early fell. 

And the dark secret of whose doom 
The Keep of Pomfret kept full well ; 

Or him that with half-careless words 

On Becket drew the dastard swords ; 



The Father of the Forest 7 

Or Eleanor's undaunted son, 

That, starred with idle glory, came 

Bearing from leaguered Ascalon 
The barren splendour of his fame, 

And, vanquished by an unknown bow, 

Lies vainly great at Fontevraud ; 

Or him, the footprints of whose power 
Made mightier whom he overthrew ; 

A man built like a mountain-tower, 
A fortress of heroic thew ; 

The Conqueror, in our soil who set 

This stem of Kinghood flowering yet ; 

These, or the living fame of these, 

Perhaps thou minglest — who shall say? — 

With thrice remoter memories, 
And phantoms of the mistier day 

Long ere the tanner's daughter's son 

From Harold's hands this realm had won. 



8 The Father of the Forest 

What years are thine, not mine to guess ! 

The stars look youthful, thou being by ; 
Youthful the sun's glad-heartedness ; 

Witless of time the unaging sky, 
And these dim-groping roots around 
So deep a human Past are wound, 

That, musing in thy shade, for me 

The tidings scarce would strangely fall 

Of fair-haired despots of the sea 
Scaling our eastern island-wall, 

From their long ships of norland pine, 

Their " surf-deer," driven o'er wilds of brine. 

Nay, hid by thee from Summer's gaze 
That seeks in vain this couch of loam, 

I should behold, without amaze, 

Camped on yon down the hosts of Rome, 

Nor start though English woodlands heard 

The selfsame mandatory word 



The Father of the Forest 

As by the cataracts of the Nile 
Marshalled the legions long ago, 

Or where the lakes are one blue smile 
'Neath pageants of Helvetian snow, 

Or 'mid the Syrian sands that lie 

Sick of the Day's great tearless eye. 

Or on barbaric plains afar, 

Where, under Asia's fevering ray. 

The long lines of imperial war 

O'er Tigris passed, and with dismay 

In fanged and iron deserts found 

Embattled Persia closing round. 

And 'mid their eagles watched on high 
The vultures gathering for a feast. 

Till, from the quivers of the sky, 
The gorgeous star-flight of the East 

Flamed, and the bow of darkness bent 

O'er Julian dying in his tent. 



lo The Father of the Forest 

II 

Was it the wind befooling me 

With ancient echoes, as I lay? 
Was it the antic fantasy 

Whose elvish mockeries cheat the day? 
Surely a hollow murmur stole 
From wizard bough and ghostly bole ! 

" Who prates to me of arms and kings, 
Here in these courts of old repose? 

Thy babble is of transient things, 
Broils, and the dust of foolish blows. 

Thy sounding annals are at best 

The witness of a world's unrest. 

'• Goodly the ostents are to thee, 

And pomps of Time : to me more sweet 
The vigils of Eternity, 

And Silence patient at my feet ; 



The Father of the Forest 1 1 

And dreams beyond the deadening range 
And dull monotonies of Change. 

" Often an air comes idling by 
With news of cities and of men : 

I hear a multitudinous sigh 
And lapse into my soul again. 

Shall her great noons and sunsets be 

Blurred with thine infelicity? 

" Now from these veins the strength of old, 
The warmth and lust of life depart : 

Full of mortality, behold 

The cavern that was once my heart ! 

Me, with blind arm, in season due, 

Let the aerial woodman hew. 

** For not though mightiest mortals fall, 
The starry chariot hangs delayed; 



12 The Father of the Forest 

His axle is uncooled, nor shall 

The thunder of His wheels be stayed. 
A changeless pace His coursers keep, 
And halt not at the wells of sleep. 

" The South shall bless, the East shall blight, 
The red rose of the Dawn shall blow ; 

The million-lilied stream of Night 
Wide in ethereal meadows flow ; 

And Autumn mourn, and everything 

Dance to the wild pipe of the Spring. 

" With oceans heedless round her feet, 
And the indifferent heavens above. 

Earth shall the ancient tale repeat 

Of wars and tears, and death and love ; 

And, wise from all the foolish Past, 

Shall peradventure hail at last 



The Father of the Forest 13 

" The advent of that morn divine, 
When nations may as forests grow, 

Wherein the oak hates not the pine. 
Nor beeches wish the cedars woe. 

But all, in their unlikeness, blend 

Confederate to one golden end — ■ 

" Beauty : the Vision whercunto, 
In joy, with pantings, from afar. 

Through sound and odour, form and hue. 
And mind and clay, and worm and star — 

Now touching goal, now backward hurled — 

Toils the indomitable world." 



Hymn to the Sea 



TO HENRY NORMAN 



Hymn to the Sea* 
I 

RANT, O regal in bounty, a subtle and 
delicate largess ; 
Grant an ethereal alms, out of the wealth 
of thy soul : 
Suffer a tarrying minstrel, who finds, not 
fashions his numbers, — 
Who, from the commune of air, cages the 
volatile song, — 
Here to capture and prison some fugitive 
breath of thy descant. 
Thine and his own as thy roar lisped on 
the lips of a shell. 

♦Copyright. 

17 



1 8 Hymn to the Sea 

Now while the vernal impulsion makes lyrical 
all that hath language, 
While, through the veins of the Earth, 
riots the ichor of Spring, 
While, with throes, with raptures, with loos- 
ing of bonds, with unsealings, — 
Arrowy pangs of delight, piercing the core 
of the world, — 
Tremors and coy unfoldings, reluctances, 
sweet agitations, — 
Youth, irrepressibly fair, wakes like a won- 
dering rose. 



II 

Lover whose vehement kisses on lips irre- 
sponsive are squandered. 
Lover that wooest in vain Earth's imper- 
turbable heart ; 



Hymn to the Sea 19 

Athlete mightily frustrate, who pittest thy 
thews against legions, 
Locked with fantastical hosts, bodiless 
arms of the sky ; 
Sea that breakest forever, that breakest and 
never art broken, 
Like unto thine, from of old, springeth the 
spirit of man, — 
Nature's wooer and fighter, whose years are 
a suit and a wrestling. 
All their hours, from his birth, hot with 
desire and with fray ; 
Amorist agonist man, that immortally pining 
and striving, 
Snatches the glory of life only from love 
and from war ; 
Man that, rejoicing in conflict, like thee when 
precipitate tempest. 
Charge after thundering charge, clangs on 
thy resonant mail, 



20 Hymn to the Sea 

Seemeth so easy to shatter, and proveth so 
hard to be cloven ; 
Man whom the gods, in his pain, curse with 
a soul that endures ; 
Man whose deeds, to the doer, come back 
as thine own exhalations 
Into thy bosom return, weepings of moun- 
tain and vale ; 
Man with the cosmic fortunes and starry 
vicissitudes tangled. 
Chained to the wheel of the world, blind 
with the dust of its speed. 
Even as thou, O giant, whom trailed in the 
wake of her conquests 
Night's sweet despot draws, bound to her 
ivory car ; 
Man with inviolate caverns, impregnable 
holds in his nature. 
Depths no storm can pierce, pierced with 
a shaft of the sun ; 



Hymn to the Sea ai 

Man that is galled with his confines, and 
burdened yet more with his vastness, 
Born too great for his ends, never at peace 
with his goal ; 
Man whom Fate, his victor, magnanimous, 
clement in triumph. 
Holds as a captive king, mewed in a pal- 
ace divine : 
Wide its leagues of pleasance, and ample of 
purview its windows ; 
Airily falls, in its courts, laughter of foun- 
tains at play ; 
Naught, when the harpers are harping, un- 
timely reminds him of durance ; 
None, as he sits at the feast, whisper Cap- 
tivity's name ; 
But, would he parley with Silence, withdraw 
for awhile unattended. 
Forth to the beckoning world 'scape for 
an hour and be free. 



22 Hymn to the Sea 

Lo, his adventurous fancy coercing at once 
and provoking, 
Rise the unscalable walls, built with a 
word at the prime ; 
Lo, immobile as statues, with pitiless faces 
of iron, 
Armed at each obstinate gate, stand the 
impassable guards. 

Ill 

Miser whose coffered recesses the spoils of 
eternity cumber. 
Spendthrift foaming thy soul wildly in 
fury away, — 
We, self-amorous mortals, our own multitud- 
inous image 
Seeking in all we behold, seek it and find 
it in thee : 



Hymn to the Sea aj 

Seek it and find it when o'er us the exquisite 
fabric of Silence 
Perilous-turreted hangs, trembles and dul- 
cetly falls ; 
When the aerial armies engage amid orgies 
of music, 
Braying of arrogant brass, whimper of 
querulous reeds ; 
When, at his banquet, the Summer is purple 
and drowsed with repletion ; 
When, to his anchorite board, taciturn 
Winter repairs ; 
When by the tempest are scattered magnifi- 
cent ashes of Autumn ; 
When, upon orchard and lane, breaks the 
white foam of the Spring : 
When, in extravagant revel, the Dawn, a 
bacchante upleaping, 
Spills, on the tresses of Night, vintages 
golden and red ; 



24 Hymn to the Sea 

When, as a token at parting, munificent Day, 
for remembrance, 
Gives, unto men that forget, Ophirs of 
fabulous ore ; 
When, invincibly rushing, in luminous palpi- 
tant deluge. 
Hot from the summits of Life, poured is 
the lava of noon ; 
When, as yonder, thy mistress, at height of 
her mutable glories. 
Wise from the magical East, comes like a 
sorceress pale. 
Ah, she comes, she rises, — impassive, emo- 
tionless, bloodless. 
Wasted and ashen of cheek, zoning her 
ruins with pearl. 
Once she was warm, she was joyous, desire 
in her pulses abounding : 
Surely thou lovedst her well, then, in her 
conquering youth ! 



Hymn to the Sea 25 

Surely not all unimpassioned, at sound of 
thy rough serenading, 
She, from the balconied night, unto her 
melodist leaned, — 
Leaned unto thee, her bondsman, who keep- 
est to-day her commandments, 
All for the sake of old love, dead at thy 
heart though it lie. 

IV 

Yea, it is we, light perverts, that waver, and 
shift our allegiance ; 
We, whom insurgence of blood dooms to 
be barren and waste ; 
We, unto Nature imputing our frailties, our 
fever and tumult ; 
We, that with dust of our strife sully the 
hue of her peace. 



26 Hymn to the Sea 

Thou, with punctual service, fulfillest thy 
task, being constant ; 
Thine but to ponder the Law, labour and 
greatly obey ; 
Wherefore, with leapings of spirit, thou 
chantest the chant of the faithful, 
Chantest aloud at thy toil, cleansing the 
Earth of her stain ; 
Leagued in antiphonal chorus with stars and 
the populous Systems, 
Following these as their feet dance to the 
rhyme of the Suns ; 
Thou thyself but a billow, a ripple, a drop of 
that Ocean, 
Which, labyrinthine of arm, folding us 
meshed in its coil, 
Shall, as now, with elations, august exulta- 
tions and ardours. 
Pour, in unfaltering tide, all its unanimous 
waves, 



Hymn to the Sea 27 

When, from this threshold of being, these 
steps of the Presence, this precinct, 
Into the matrix of Life darkly divinely 
resumed, 
Man and his littleness perish, erased like an 
error and cancelled, 
Man and his greatness survive, lost in the 
greatness of God. 



The Tomb of Burns 



TO THE HON. MRS. HENNIKER 



The Tomb of Burns* 

T T THAT woos the world to yonder shrine? 
^ ^ What sacred clay, what dust divine? 
Was this some Master faultless-fine, 

In whom we praise 
The cunning of the jewelled line 

And carven phrase? 

A searcher of our source and goal, 

A reader of God's secret scroll? 

A Shakespeare, flashing o'er the whole 

Of Man's domain 
The splendour of his cloudless soul 

And perfect brain? 

♦Copyright. 

31 



32 The Tomb of Burns 

Some Keats, to Grecian gods allied, 
Clasping all Beauty as his bride? 
Some Shelley, soaring dim-descried 

Above Time's throng. 
And heavenward hurling wild and wide 

His spear of song? 

A lonely Wordsworth, from the crowd 
Half hid in light, half veiled in cloud? 
A sphere-born Milton cold and proud. 

In hallowing dews 
Dipt, and with gorgeous ritual vowed 

Unto the Muse? 

Nay, none of these, — and little skilled 
On heavenly heights to sing and build ! 
Thine, thine, O Earth, whose fields he tilled, 

And thine alone. 
Was he whose fiery heart lies stilled 

'Neath yonder stone. 



The Tomb of Burns ^^ 

He came when poets had forgot 
How rich and strange the human lot ; 
How warm the tints of Life ; how hot 

Are Love and Hate ; 
And what makes Truth divine, and what 

Makes Manhood great. 

A ghostly troop, in pale amaze 

They melted 'neath that living gaze, — 

His in whose spirit's gusty blaze 

We seem to hear 
The crackling of their phantom bays 

Sapless and sere ! 

P'or, 'mid an age of dust and dearth, 
Once more had bloomed immortal worth. 
There, in the strong, splenetic North, 

The Spring began. 
A mighty mother had brought forth 

A mighty man. 



34 The Tomb of Burns 

No mystic torch through Time he bore, 
No virgin veil from Life he tore ; 
His soul no bright insignia wore 

Of starry birth ; 
He saw what all men see — no more — 

In heaven and earth ; 

But as, when thunder crashes nigh, 
All darkness opes one flaming eye, 
And the world leaps against the sky, — 

So fiery-clear 
Did the old truths that we pass by 

To him appear. 

How could he 'scape the doom of such 
As feel the airiest phantom-touch 
Keenlier than others feel the clutch 

Of iron powers, — 
Who die of having lived so much 

In their large hours? 



The Tomb of Burns 35 

He erred, he sinned : and if there be 
Who, from his hapless frailties free, 
Rich in the poorer virtues, see 

His faults alone, — 
To such, O Lord of Charity, 

Be mercy shown ! 

Singly he faced the bigot brood, 
The meanly wise, the feebly good ; 
He pelted them with pearl, with mud ; 

He fought them well, — 
But ah, the stupid million stood. 

And he — he fell ! 

All bright and glorious at the start, 

'Twas his ignobly to depart, 

Slain by his own too affluent heart. 

Too generous blood ; 
And blindly, having lost Life's chart. 

To meet Death's flood. 



^6 The Tomb of Burns 

So closes the fantastic fray, 
The duel of the spirit and clay ! 
So come bewildering disarray 

And blurring gloom, 
The irremediable day 

And final doom. 

So passes, all confusedly 

As lights that hurry, shapes that flee 

About some brink we dimly see. 

The trivial, great, 
Squalid, majestic tragedy 

Of human fate. 

Not ours to gauge the more or less. 
The will's defect, the blood's excess. 
The earthy humours that oppress 

The radiant mind. 
His greatness, not his littleness, 

Concerns mankind. 



The Tomb of Burns 37 

A dreamer of the common dreams, 
A fisher in familiar streams, 
He chased the transitory gleams 

That all pursue ; 
But on his lips the eternal themes 

Again were new. 

With shattering ire or withering mirth 
He smote each worthless claim to worth. 
The barren fig-tree cumbering Earth 

He would not spare. 
Through ancient lies of proudest birth 

He drove his share. 

To him the Powers that formed him brave. 
Yet weak to breast the fatal wave, 
A mighty gift of Hatred gave, — 

A gift above 
All other gifts benefic, save 

The gift of Love. 



38 The Tomb of Burns 

He saw 'tis meet that Man possess 
The will to curse as well bless, 
To pity — and be pitiless, 

To make, and mar ; 
The fierceness that from tenderness 

Is never far. 

And so his fierce and tender strain 
Lives, and his idlest words remain 
To flout oblivion, that in vain 

Strives to destroy 
One lightest record of his pain 

Or of his joy. 

And though thrice statelier names decay. 

His own can wither not away 

While plighted lass and lad shall stray 

Among the broom, 
Where evening touches glen and brae 

With rosy gloom ; 



The Tomb of Burns 39 

While Hope and Love with Youth abide ; 
While Age sits at the ingleside ; 
While yet there have not wholly died 

The heroic fires, 
The patriot passion, and the pride 

In noble sires ; 

While, with the conquering Saxon breed 
Whose fair estate of speech and deed 
Heritors north and south of Tweed 

Alike may claim. 
The dimly mingled Celtic seed 

Flowers like a flame ; 

While nations see in holy trance 
That vision of the world's advance 
Which glorified his countenance 

When from afar 
He hailed the Hope that shot o'er France 

Its crimson star ; 



40 The Tomb of Burns 

While, plumed for flight, the Soul deplores 
The cage that foils the wing that soars ; 
And while, through adamantine doors 

In dreams flung wide, 
We hear resound, on mortal shores. 

The immortal tide. 



Sonnets 



T THINK you never were of earthly frame, 

-*- O truant from some charmed world 

unknown ! 

A fairy empress, you forsook your throne, 

Fled your inviolate court, and hither came ; 

Donned mortal vesture ; wore a woman's 
name ; 
Like a mere woman, loved ; and so are 

grown 
At last a little human, save alone 
For the wild elvish heart not love could 

tame. 
And one day I believe you will return 
To your fair isle amid the enchanted sea. 
There, in your realm, perhaps remember 
me, 
Perhaps forget ; but I shall never learn ! 
I, loveless dust within a dreamless urn, 
Dead to your beauty's immortality. 
43 



To 

With a Volume of Verse. 
TF, on these pale and trembling blooms, 
"*■ full soon 

The winter of oblivion should descend, 
Remember, it was in my summer's noon 

I gave you the poor posy, gentle friend. 
Remember, how a fickle gust of praise 

Ruffled my foliage in that perished time, 
And by the after-light of these dead days 
Read once again my world-forgotten 
rhyme. 
Say: "Fame his mistress was; he wooed 
her long, 
She toyed with him an hour — and flung 
him by ; 
With me alone the memory of his song 
Reluctant fades, and hesitates to die." 
Then burn the book, that eyes less kind 

than those 
Vex not the haunted dusk of its repose. 
44 



The Turk in Armenia 

XT 7 HAT profits it, O England, to pre- 

^ ^ vail 
In camp and mart and council, and bestrew 
With sovereign argosies the subject blue, 
And wrest thy tribute from each golden gale, 
If, in thy strongholds, thou canst hear the 

wail 
Of maidens martyred by the turbaned crew 
Whose tenderest mercy was the sword that 

slew, 
And lift no hand to wield the purging flail? 
We deemed of old thou held'st a charge 

from Him 
Who watches girdled by His seraphim, 
To smite the wronger with thy destined rod. 
Wait'st thou His sign? Enough, the sleep- 
less cry 
Of virgin souls for vengeance, and on high 
The gathering blackness of the frown of God ! 

March 2, 1895. 

45 



Lyrics 



T DO not ask to have my fill 
-■■ Of wine, or love, or fame. 
I do not, for a little ill, 

Against the gods exclaim. 

One boon of Fortune I implore, 
With one petition kneel : 

At least caress me not^ before 

Thou break me on thy wheel. 



49 



/^ LIKE a Queen's her happy tread, 
^-^ And like a Queen's her golden head ! 
But O, at last, when all is said. 

Her woman's heart for me ! 

We wandered where the river gleamed 
'Neath oaks that mused and pines that 

dreamed. 
A wild thing of the woods she seemed, 
So proud, and pure, and free ! 

All heaven drew nigh to hear her sing, 
When from her lips her soul took wing ; 
The oaks forgot their pondering, 
The pines their reverie. 

And O, her happy queenly tread, 
And O, her queenly golden head ! 
But O, her heart, when all is said, 
Her woman's heart for me ! 



50 



Apologia 



Apolog 



'T^HUS much I know : what dues soe'er 
-*- be mine, 

Of fame or of oblivion, Time the just. 
Punctiliously assessing, shall award. 
This have I doubted never ; this is sure. 
But one meanwhile shall chide me — one shall 

curl 
Superior lips — because my handiwork. 
The issue of my solitary toil. 
The harvest of my spirit, even these 
My numbers, are not something, good or ill. 
Other than I have ever striven, in years 
Lit by a conscious and a patient aim, 
With hopes and with despairs, to fashion 
them ; 

53 



54 Apologia 

Or, it may be, because I have full oft 

In singers' selves found me a theme of song. 

Holding these also to be very part 

Of Nature's greatness, and accounting not 

Their descants least heroical of deeds ; 

Or, yet again, because I bring naught new, 

Save as each noontide or each Spring is new, 

Into an old and iterative world, 

And can but proffer unto whoso will 

A cool and no-wise turbid cup, from wells 

Our fathers digged ; and have not thought 

it shame 
To tread in nobler footprints than mine own. 
And travel by the light of purer eyes. 
Ev'n such offences am I charged withal, 
Till, breaking silence, I am moved to cry, 
What would ye, then, my masters? Is the 

Muse 
Fall'n to a thing of Mode, that must each 

year 



Apologia 55 

Supplant her derelict self of yester-year? 
Or do the mighty voices of old days 
At last so tedious grow, that one whose lips 
Inherit some far echo of their tones — 
How far, how faint, none better knows than 

he 
Who hath been nourished on their utterance 

— can 
But irk the ears of such as care no more 
The accent of dead greatness to recall? 
If, with an ape's ambition, I rehearse 
Their gestures, trick me in their stolen robes, 
The sorry mime of their nobility, 
Dishonouring whom I vainly emulate. 
The poor imposture soon shall shrink re- 
vealed 
In the ill grace with which their gems be- 

star 
An abject brow; but if I be indeed 
Their true descendant, as the veriest hind 



56 Apologia 

May yet be sprung of kings, their lineaments 
Will out, the signature of ancestry 
Leap unobscured, and somewhat of them- 
selves 
In me, their lowly scion, live once more. 
With grateful, not vain-glorious joy, I 

dreamed 
It did so live ; and ev'n such pride was mine 
As is next neighbour to humility. 
For he that claims high lineage, yet may feel 
How thinned in the transmission is become 
The ancient blood he boasts ; how slight he 

stands 
In the great shade of his majestic sires. 
But it was mine endeavour so to sing 
As if these lofty ones a moment stooped 
From their still spheres, and undisdainful 

graced 
My note with audience, nor incurious heard 
Whether, degenerate irredeemably, 



Apologia 57 

The faltering minstrel shamed his starry kin. 
And though I be to these but as a knoll 
About the feet of the high mountains, scarce 
Remarked at all save when a valley cloud 
Holds the high mountains hidden, and the 

knoll 
Against the cloud shows briefly eminent ; 
Yet ev'n as they, I too, with constant heart, 
And with no light or careless ministry, 
Have served what seemed the Voice ; and 

unprofane, 
Have dedicate to melodious ends 
All of myself that least ignoble was. 
For though of faulty and of erring walk, 
I have not suffered aught in me of frail 
To blur my song ; I have not paid the world 
The evil and the insolent courtesy 
Of offering it my baseness for a gift. 
And unto such as think all Art is cold. 
All music unimpassioned, if it breathe 



58 Apologia 

An ardour not of Eros' lips, and glow 
With fire not caught from Aphrodite's 

breast, 
Be it enough to say, that in Man's life 
Is room for great emotions unbegot 
Of dalliance and embracement, unbegot 
Ev'n of the purer nuptials of the soul ; 
And one not pale of blood, to human touch 
Not tardily responsive, yet may know 
A deeper transport and a mightier thrill 
Than comes of commerce with mortality. 
When, rapt from all relation with his kind, 
All temporal and immediate circumstance 
In silence, in the visionary mood 
That, flashing light on the dark deep, per- 
ceives 
Order beyond this coil and errancy. 
Is led from the fretful hour he stands alone 
And hears the eternal movement, and be- 
holds 



Apologia 59 

Above him and around and at his feet 
In million-billowed consentaneousness, 
The flowing, flowing, flowing of the world. 

Such moments, are they not the peaks of 

life? 
Enough for me, if on these pages fall 
The shadow of the summits, and an air 
Not dim from human hearth-fires, sometimes 

blow. 



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